WHAT IS PROGRESS

 

WHAT IS PROGRESS

            Progress is defined as forward movement, headway, advancement, development, improvement, evolution, etc. It is natural. The world has been progressing in many ways for millions of years since it was created by God. The initial progress was very slow. For the last few centuries it has been very vast and also quite fast and astonishing both materially and technologically. The population of the world has also multiplied phenomenally.

            The time for non-development and zero progress will never come. Some countries will remain in the process of development, and some will have attained an appreciable degree of development, and some will aspire to become more developed than others. Development will thus become most competitive.

            It Is not wrong to say that all types of development should enhance people’s peace of mind and make them more God-fearing and morally stronger than ever before.  Unfortunately, this does not happen. Lust for unprecedented progress and development increases and breeds mutual tensions between societies and nations.           

            I believe in simple living and high thinking and also just necessary but continuous  development. Over-development is like over-eating. It generates  social and political ailments and undesirable pride, arrogance and mutual enmity.

             Finally, what the German publicist Gentz Friedrich von (1764-1832) said : Two principles govern the moral and intellectual world. One is perpetual progress, the other the necessary limitations to that progress. If the former alone prevailed, there would be nothing steadfast and durable on earth, and the whole of social world would be the sport of winds and waves. If the latter had exclusive sway or even if it obtained a mischievous preponderancy, every thing would petrify or rot. The best ages of the world are those in which the two principles are the most equally balanced.   

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G.R.Kanwal

3 July 2024